Tazz Headlight Conversion

It is winter again, the time of year when people forget the car's lights on and return a couple of hours later just to find that the battery has been drained.

All the Golfs I drove years ago had this feature that the head lights only switches on when the ignition is switched on. The parking lights can always be on, but the head lights only when you switch the vehicle on.

Years ago my Dad had one of those first Camries. That one was even better. When you stop and the headlights are on, you switch the car off, then the lights still be on, but when you open the door, the head lights will turn off.

With the Tazz and the Hilux it most certainly is not the case.

So I investigated. In the end it was a fairly simple conversion.

I did this on a 2005 model 1300 Tazz. I am not sure if the wiring on older model Tazz, Corrolla or Conquest will be the same.

First you have to locate the fuse box in the engine compartment. When you open the bonnet and look at the engine, it will be that black box on the right.

When you open it, you will see some fuses and relays.

You have to loosen the fuse box by removing the two nuts on the side, it takes a 10 spanner.

You do not really have to open the fuse box to do the conversion, but it is good to know what is inside. The red relay is the one which switches the lights on and off. When you switch the head lights on you will hear something click in the engine compartment, that clicking sound comes from this relay.

This relay has permanent power on it. So whether the vehicle is switched on or not, the head lights will go on when you switch the lights on. We want to change that. We want the relay to only have power when the car is switched on.

Now turn the box around and it will look like the picture below. You have to remove the cover at the back

Now look at the wires at the back. You will note one big red plug, a black plug, small white and big white plug.

See pic below

The red/white wire that goes into the big red plug is the wire which powers the light relay. This wire is always on and we have to change that.

On the big white plug you will see a thick blue wire. That wire happens to only have power when the ignition is switched on. So I used that one to power the light relay.

I added an addition relay to do the switching on and off work.

The thick blue power wire only switches my extra relay on and off. The relay connects and disconnects the red/white wire. Thus the red/white wire will be "cut" when the ignition is off and connected when the ignition is on.

Hope it makes sense.

Close the the fuse box the Tazz have 3 relays and there was space for a fourth, so I just added it there as you can see in the second picture.

The diagram below shows a typical relay.

The thing between points 85 and 86 is the solenoid or electro magnet thingy of the relay. When you apply power to it, it will pull in and close the contact between points 30 and 87. So you see it is like a switch.

To let the relay work you need to add positive to any one of points 85 or 86 and an earth wire to the other.

If you look at the diagram below you will see how I connected it.

Remember the different wires I explained below pic 4.
So the blue wire only gets power when the ignition is in the on position. Thus when you turn the car on, blue gets power which activates the solenoid of the relay. That closes contacts 30 and 87 which connects the red/white wire which we've cut and the original light relay can now activate. I had to extend the red/white wires to get to the relay. Remember to solder those joints, you do not want to end up without lights.

The earth wire at point 86 I sommer connected to the body behind the set of relays.